Ben's Refurbished Mitsubishi Miev

[razor02097]

Get her a spa gift certificate, that will make her happy and give you time to clean parts in the tub

[Daox]

Too bad its not summer... I would have let you borrow my parts washer. Its got a brush and pump and everything. But, the water based cleaner I use in it freezes in winter.

[Cobb]

I had hope he wouldnt of bought the car unless it was one hell of a deal. Now that he has it, maybe he can rent a pressure washer and use some cleaner, degreaser that would work with removing salt and just hose the whole thing down, then coat it in minearl oil, wd 49, etc?

Originally Posted by Daox

Too bad its not summer... I would have let you borrow my parts washer. Its got a brush and pump and everything. But, the water based cleaner I use in it freezes in winter.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Xist, interesting idea.

Not crazy I am?

[nemo]

Originally Posted by Xist

Not crazy I am?

My dad says he is the only sane person in the world. So! You have a lot of company.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by nemo

My dad says he is the only sane person in the world. So! You have a lot of company.

Life is never boring when you keep crazy people around.

Ben, have you tried putting your batteries in the washing machine? :P

[jwr813472]

Subscribed.

Great thread!

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by Xist

Ben, have you tried putting your batteries in the washing machine? :P

I'm trying to NOT destroy my ecosystem...
Video Demo No joke. Click the link.

So far, I've run ONE complete charge/discharge/recharge cycle on one cell (the one we started in that last video)

I really need to read through some more info on the charger manufacturer's web site, but it looks like the cell is actually pretty good! Of course that's only ONE cell of the 8 that I have pulled from the car, but it's a start.

I found a preset in the charger for A123 cells that will do 40 amps. I loaded that pre-set, tweaked it a little, and am now running a cycle at 40 amps.
Being able to test a battery in 2.5 hours instead of ten seems appealing. I'll monitor heat while this is going on. the 12 gauge cables from the charger will get warm at 40 amps.

I'll let you know what the results of that test are.

[razor02097]

Just be careful messing with those batteries man... Take it from someone who has been burnt by a lithium battery before it isn't fun at all!.. I was wearing goggles and gloves.... but mechanics gloves are not sufficient! Catastrophic failure generally results in spitting melted material and fire. Although I was messing with hobby type packs...Hopefully those cells are more robust.

[bennelson]

Today, I was able to do a complete charge cycle of a cell from the i-Miev at 40 amps. Using the CellPro6, I changed the charge preset from a generic LiPo to one used for A123 cells. That setting allows charge and discharge rates of up to 40 amps. I looked through the preset and changed it to charge up to 4.0V (the max allowed on this preset) and the maximum discharge down to 3.0V.

I had previously charged the cell to 4.2V. Once my cycle was complete, I saved and exported these two images from the graphing portion of the charger software. As you can see on the voltage chart, it starts at 4.2V, gets discharged to 3V and then charged back up to 4.0V. If you look at the Pack Capacity chart, you can see that when the battery was charged to 4.2V, the charger read a capacity of 44AH, but when charged to only 4.0V, the capacity is only 26AH. Lithium isn’t exactly linear to voltage is it?

Anyways, I’m pretty excited to see that I actually CAN charge and discharge this cell. While charging to 4.0V doesn’t exactly give a true reflection of pack capacity, being able to charge at a rate of 40A instead of 10A cuts my testing time from 10 hours to 2.5 hours! (I was also monitoring temperature during this test. The 12ga battery cables get a little warm from that much current. The cell itself only got very slightly warm to the touch.)

My next challenge is to safely bring up other cells from 0V to at least 2.55v (the minimum the charger requires to sense a pack is connected.) So far, two options that may be possible are to use a cell phone charger to very slowly bring up the voltage at low amperage or to perhaps parallel a bad cell with a good one with a resistor to limit current to something fairly low. If you have some good ideas to safely and reliably bring up cell voltage to the point that I can use the smart lithium charger on it, please let me know!